Engineering Culture at Airbnb - Airbnb Engineering

Engineering Culture at Airbnb - Airbnb Engineering

Engineers own their impact At the core our philosophy is this: engineers own their own impact. Each engineer is individually responsible for creating as much value for our users and for the company as possible. We hire primarily for problem-solving. When you have a team of strong problem-solvers, the most efficient way to move the company forward is to leave decision-making up to individual engineers. Our culture, tools, and processes all revolve around giving individual contributors accurate and timely information that they can use to make great decisions. This helps us iterate, experiment, and learn faster. Making this environment possible requires a few things. Engineers are involved in goal-setting, planning and brainstorming for all projects, and they have the freedom to select which projects they work on. They also have the flexibility to balance long and short term work, creating business impact while managing technical debt. Does this mean engineers just do whatever they want? No. They work to define and prioritize impactful work with the rest of their team including product managers, designers, data scientists and others. Just as importantly, engineers have transparent access to information. We default to information sharing. The more information engineers have, the more autonomously they can work. Everything is shared unless there’s an explicit reason not to (which is rare). That includes access to the analytics data warehouse, weekly project updates, CEO staff meeting notes, and a lot more. This environment can be scary, especially for new engineers. No one is going to tell you exactly how to have impact. That’s why one of our values is that helping others takes priority. In our team, no one is ever too busy to help. In particular, our new grad hires are paired with a team that can help them find leveraged problems. Whether it’s a technical question or a strategic one, engineers always prioritize helping each other first.